Still Travelling

Its been a while since I’ve written here. It doesn’t mean I haven’t been writing – in fact, I think I’ve written quite a lot since I last wrote anything here. I’ve mostly been dabbling in different projects and trying to see the wood for the trees. I’m fairly sure that being a writer, just like any other craft, is hard work, harder than it was when I first started last year, because you have to keep motivating yourself when things around you are distracting. I still don’t have a definitive answer for avoiding distraction when you’re a writer (or an illustrator, or an artist or creative person).

I’m still learning from trial and error and trying to get myself focused. A lot of the time, I feel like I’m swimming in thick soup – I feel sluggish and reluctant to sit down and write something. The past couple of days have been more productive though, more productive than anything I’ve done in the past few months. The change of season in the air is a kind of balm, the sort of breeze that whips through and clears the cobwebs. I feel more able to focus my mind on the task in hand – pushing myself towards a freelance writing career, building my experience and figuring out to do what I love doing and making myself money.

The past week I’ve been excited by the possibility of the Steampunk genre mixed with Urban Fantasy/Supernatural fiction. What I want from a story is for it to be exciting to write, for it to be new, even though I’m rusty and most likely won’t write something incredible to start with. The last short story I wrote was a few months ago, and perhaps because I’ve been depressed and sluggish its just been on the backburner. What I want is to find a way of motivating myself at my lowest points. Its no wonder that people think writers are tortured – they don’t necessarily have a lot of self belief, and writing is incredibly hard and painstaking. If I find it hard to write a short story, I just know that when I sit down to write my first novel, it will be ten times harder but definitely worth it.

I’ve also set up my own website, to have the best of my blogs in one place. That doesn’t mean I won’t be writing here, or at Cats and Chocolate, or at Polka Dots and Rainbows, but it does mean that I might have other content on it that doesn’t appear anywhere else. It makes me wonder why I’ve got all these blogs if I’ve actually got somewhere that can have more potential, since I’m also paying for it every month. I’ve always felt like I wanted a home of my own on the web – you know, a place where I can be myself but also sell my talents and creativity to the world so that I can make a living for myself. I’ve changed over the years, as people do. My changes have been both startling and difficult – I feel I’m more confident that I’ve ever been but at the same time could do with more confidence and self belief. Being a writer means I have to work under my own steam and be confident that I will get there.

How I felt a year ago compared to now only makes me realise that I’m still on a journey and it will take a while before I’m completely confident in my ability as a writer. I’ve written for years but not half as much as I’m writing now. Last year I set free a part of me that needed to come out, from under the pile of books I’m usually hidden under. I’ve proven to myself that I can write about a great many things – fashion, deafness, politics, feminism, writing, books, music, theatre, films, society and many more besides. Writing is like breathing to me – I don’t think I could exist without it. I might be able to, but it would be joyless, and I doubt I would be able to express myself well enough.

I’ve learnt that writing a character is the most important thing to me. If I can find a good character, then the story flows better, and I’m less inclined to give up before I’ve even started. My commitment to a certain character means that I keep going because I need to tell their story. I do sometimes start with a concept or time period or a certain idea, but I think fitting a character around something is a bad idea because their story develops from their personality, and not the other way around. I know that some writers find that starting with a setting or era or some other idea works for them, but I’ve discovered that characterisation is the biggest starter for me most of the time. You could have a great story but a one dimension character – so the reader will probably give up.

The past few days I’ve just been easing myself back into clustering and freewriting, so that the ideas are starting to flow again. I feel less like I’m flailing around and more like there is a flow to my thoughts and ideas. I accept that there are painful moments when you can’t write a great idea down and you have to learn to let go. Nobody said writing was a happy profession! Perhaps that is why I have such moments of depression – I’m happier once I’m mid-way through something and have committed something to paper (or screen). The time before and after that are incredibly torturous, because you have to force yourself to sit down and write, and then you have to start the editing process, which can be agonising but necessary.

So what is it all for? I don’t know. Thats my answer – I don’t know. You might say its because writing and reading are my passions, or you might say that its because I just can’t stop. Some days I write and write and then feel like I’m losing ideas if I don’t keep going. I have to physically stop myself from writing from dusk til dawn sometimes, because there are other things in my life and I have to live. Writing is reliving things, it isn’t living itself. It makes me feel things more acutely and helps me to work out what I feel about things – the truth. It might be ‘making up’ things, but its also about telling the truth, and being honest with yourself. For me, its about keeping my heart and mind open, about learning. I will always be learning things.

I don’t write all these blogs because I’m a narcissist and want acceptance. I write because I want to share, and have people share with me. Its because maybe someone will stumble across one or all of my blogs and find it strikes a chord with them – that they want to write too, that they’ve been denying themselves, or that they want to be more creative. We get one life (as far as I know), and living it is the most important thing.

Imagination is the beginning of creation. You imagine what you desire, you will what you imagine and at last you create what you will. ~ George Bernard Shaw.

Joy

The sun is out and it’s nice and warm in our room, which makes a change from the chilly spring air that has been sweeping through the room. Our attic room spans the length of the top of the house, but isn’t the width because there is a little bathroom and then the staircase after the landing outside the room. You would think that there is enough room for everything up here but two people’s lives coming together involves a lot of stuff. There are shelves of DVDs and shelves of books and two chest of drawers, a huge wardrobe with a cupboard attached, a huge four poster wrought iron bed (it’s lovely, all black curls and truly four poster), one desk, which we both share at opposite ends, two computers, lots of shoes, lots of bags of junk that need sorting and throwing out – you get the picture, I hope. Then there are lots of framed pictures on the walls, most of them framed in stylish black. I keep thinking I should change them around a bit because they don’t necessarily crowd the walls but it would be nice for a bit of blank purple wall. My walls are a dusky purple colour – not dark purple but not light lilac either. I chose a sort of grey ivory for the ceiling colour for some reason, but it works well and is warmer than plain white. I also have a dressing table where various makeup bags sit and the two drawers have my pyjamas and underwear in them.

Anyway, the reason I’m talking about this room, I think, is because I wanted to figure out what it is about this room that makes me feel more inspired than working in the living room downstairs. I have covered the plain white wardrobe with a collage of funky and interesting postcards – some of them with quotes on them, some with people I’m interested in (Frida Kahlo, Marilyn Monroe, Audrey Hepburn), some of them photos of family and friends. Some are random images that I think are interesting, like photography, art, vintage film poster images, illustration. My walls have some lovely pictures, like Vincent Van Gogh’s Cafe Terrace at Night (1888) which I have always loved and been drawn to. There is something uniquely ours about what we choose to put on our walls, even if people around the world have the same images on their walls. If something speaks to you, it speaks to you. Also, that is a bizarre metaphor – so does a picture really ‘speak’ to you?!? I wonder who came up with that?

I’m starting to get worried about my own lethargy when it comes to writing an autobiographical piece for the next TMA, so I think starting with my room is an interesting point of departure. It signifies how Dan and I are sharing our lives but it also signifies how my personality has changed yet stayed the same. I am obsessed with books – with stories and knowledge and beautiful pictures. I take immense pleasure in having beautiful and/or interesting pictures around me. I am both a very materialistic but very spiritual person, who wants more than just things – although things have the power to give me momentary joy. I value the more important things in life that make me joyful – love, laughter, deep discussions, friendship and music. Those things are almost imperceptible, but you know them when you feel them and see them. Material things can touch us deeply but at the same time I know that they’re not forever. Books are just ideas and stories, and they stay with us – yet you don’t have to actually own the book to be touched by it; it’s the same with art and music.

So I’m not sure how to break free of that paralysing fear that I don’t have enough money to buy the things that I desire, but I do know that they’re definitely not as important as spiritual happiness, the kind of happiness you can get from knowing there is someone you love, who loves you back. It’s difficult because human beings sort of waste those things – how many people let petty concerns get in the way of love? It may not be politically correct to say that money is just money, because I know how hard it is – I’ve been almost on the bottom of that myself. Yet you can’t survive without love – love of yourself, of a pet or someone else. They keep you going, when the world is crashing around you.

Maybe what is so scary about surrendering to love is that you are surrendering to something you can’t see or touch. Material love (roses, chocolates, all that jazz) isn’t love – it’s our society’s acceptable way of showing love, ie, romance. More precious to me, anyway, is that contentment you get when you’re watching a film and snuggled up with someone you love, or having a brilliant and sparkling conversation with your best friend. Sharing wisdom or being incredibly silly and pulling faces at each other.

I guess what I’m getting at is that my life at the moment is a bit so-so – I could do with more money, I’m struggling to get a grip on that article I have to write and the assignment that needs to be handed in next Friday, but I know there are things out there that make me happy and could do with some attention. I haven’t been in touch with my friends for a while and I feel a bit estranged at the moment. Dan is busy with his dissertation and Sarah is also in and out of the house a lot (my Sister). My Mum is not happy at work and my Dad seems a bit browbeaten at the moment. I don’t know what it will take to make everyone happy, but all I can do is be there and listen. Writing is my way of getting to that point of catharsis where I can just let go and be freer. I feel a bit trapped between trying to find a way to make money and trying to follow my dreams. What I want sometimes takes a backseat to the other concerns in my life – money, time, family. Then when I have time, I spend it procrastinating, no matter how I rail against myself to get stuff done. It’s time to push myself more and not be so afraid of getting things done and sorted.

So, I hope the sun is out wherever you are – and if it isn’t, then I’ll wish for sunshine for you…

The Long and Short of it

It’s been a really long time since I’ve posted here. It doesn’t mean I haven’t been writing or blogging – I’ve been mostly blogging on Cats and Chocolate, my main blog. I think I feel as if splicing my focus on a certain number of blogs was going to be difficult anyway, even though they are all in the same place on WordPress.

Since I last wrote, I signed up for the Open University course in Creative Writing, and I’ve been enjoying it very much. I’ve filled two 200 plus page notebooks already and am halfway through another one! I have never finished a notebook before and I’m pleased that it’s becoming a daily habit to at least write one thing a day. Daily writing means that I’m being productive and it can only mean that my writing gets better. I’ve written another story, which I will put up in due course when I’ve edited it a bit more. I’m learning about where my strengths and weaknesses lie, and how I can edit pieces to improve on them and make it the best it possibly could be.

I have to say though that the novel I was writing before may have to be scrapped because it’s been ages since I’ve worked on it. The course has taken precedence, so I think over the summer may be the best time to figure it all out, and work out what story I want to tell. I still feel that it’s a good story, and needs some work, maybe a reworking on the plot and characters. I feel like I put too much description in it but I will eventually go back and re-read the stuff I’ve already written to see where I can go from that.

I’m also considering writing parts of my own autobiography, partly because that is what we are doing right now in the course. I’ve had an interesting life so far and also want to tell the story of my ancestors, if I can dig up some stories. My Gran has lots of interesting anecdotes that she occasionally tells us. Apparently we have a suffragette somewhere in our family and this intrigues me as I’m a feminist. Sometimes when I think about what my ancestor’s lives were like, I’m stunned by how traits seem to pass down through generations.

My sister and I love baking and making jewellery – and these things feature in our previous generations. My Dad’s Dad was a fabulous cake maker – particularly his chocolate cake. We actually nicknamed him Grandpa Cake! My Mum’s Dad was a jeweller and his family have a jewellery shop in Newmarket. My sister and I have a small jewellery home business, which has fallen by the wayside recently but which we plan to sort out in the coming months.

The ghosts of generations past also seem to play a part in how I feel about going to certain areas of the UK. My partner is from Edinburgh and part of my family also came from there. I also went to study Sociology for my degree in York, and Yorkshire is where my Mum’s Mum comes from. Every time I go to Yorkshire, it feels like going home, for some reason I can’t place. I feel at home there, more so than I do in my native London. I miss Yorkshire very much when I’m not there.

I also think it’s interesting that people have remarked that my sister and I look Irish – we both have very different colouring but I have green eyes and poker straight fair hair, whilst my sister is dark eyed with dark, almost black, brown curly hair. I take after my Dad’s side of the family whilst my sister is said to be like my Gran’s father (from my Mum’s side), who was very dark haired and dark eyed.

My Dad’s Dad (lets call him Grandpa, for now), was a severe man, even though he was mostly severe with me and my sister in jest. He had a walking stick that he would pretend he was going to wack us on the legs with. It was very alarming, but he would never have hurt us. My Dad’s Mum, my Grandma, died when I was a baby. My Mum has said before that I look a bit like her, and have some of her calming nature. Maybe this manifests in my laid back attitude but I try to keep calm when the world is falling around me.

My Mum’s Dad, who we called Pop, had a big influence on me when it came to music and Science Fiction. He loved watching Star Wars when I was at their house in Cambridge, and I still love the films to this day. It takes me back to childhood and the dreams and fantasies I had of space and other worlds. I’m still very much drawn to imaginary worlds and other realities. I can’t imagine a life without imagination and the possibilities of the human capacity to dream.

I had my first encounter with music that I fell in love with whilst I was up there in Cambridge. I was in a huge sulk about something and my Dad came in the room and put Michael Jackson’s Thriller album on, maybe in an effort to cheer me up. The more I think about it, the more I recognise that my Dad and I have always been alike in some ways. We’re both very stubborn, and moan a lot when we have something to moan about. We both love music – but then, my Mum and Sister love music too, so it runs in our family. I’m becoming less afraid of being like my parents because they have some admirable qualities, and I’m very interested in their pasts – they were very much weekend hippies and went to many gigs in their time.

Anyway, I’m hoping to come back here and post more often, because on the other blog I tend to focus on things that I’ve been thinking about everyday and not always on my writing or the progress of my writing. So I’ll be back here sometime very soon…

Summer Lovin’…Had Me A Blast

That’s another summer gone…I’m anticipating all the things that autumn and winter bring – wrapping up warm, kicking the leaves, cider in a pub garden watching an autumn sunset, halloween, my birthday, christmas. I’m also looking forward to curling up with a good book all warm inside whilst it gets colder outside.

I’m also looking forward to seeing what these seasons bring out of me in terms of my writing – will I be writing more? Is there going to be more inspiration? I want to get the balance of my life right – enough time with friends and family, enough time to go out and enjoy myself, enough time to read and write.

Although this summer hasn’t been the best in my 24 years of existence, I’m thankful that I found an opportunity to get the ball rolling with my writing. I’ve written some pieces I’m proud of, and might take further. I’ve reclaimed my dream again, and took the long way around to get to it. Things have been up and down but now that I’m home again, I hope I won’t feel too stifled and still keep that freedom of imagination.

Anyway, there’s a new short story up here on the Showcase page if you want to read it – I promise you won’t be disappointed!

Rewriting the Script

I haven’t been blogging much here recently; mostly, it’s just been life getting in the way. I wonder how writers manage, in this day and age, to juggle all the different responsibilities that come with modern life? I for one find it difficult – to find a space where I can just set my mind free without any interruptions, or finding a state of mind where I feel inspired enough to write. Lately I’ve been tired and uninspired.

Now I’m back in London, I’m hoping to get into some good habits with writing and taking note of the world around me. This week and next week are the last two weeks I have of this particular writing course. I’ve signed up for another one; the Open University Creative Writing course, which starts in October. There are a number of reasons why I decided to sign up. Mostly it’s just really wanting a challenge, to push myself and bring something out. I need more than a summer course, no matter how wonderful it’s been and very exciting.

I’ve proven to myself that I can write, that it’s something worth pursuing and something I enjoy doing. I love the satisfaction that comes of finishing a short story, the process of writing a poem and the process of learning how to edit something and polish it. Doing my dissertations in my degrees helped with the editing part; I’m a newsletter editor and now a book review writer for a magazine. I’m learning that I need to find the time to write each day. I need to get into a habit, to write even when I feel shit and nothing feels great.

Last week was scriptwriting and I turned ‘The Night Shift’ into a script. It worked really well, because the story was already well paced and had dialogue. It didn’t take long, but I had to work myself up into the right frame of mind to write it. Towards the end of my stay in Scotland, I was finding it more and more tense because I felt like I had outstayed my welcome. There was nowhere to write except the living room and kitchen – and people came in and out a lot. I found that my writing flows better in the evening rather than in the daytime.

For some reason the night lends itself to writing – you’re all cosy indoors and it’s more atmospheric. I suppose it depends where you are really. In London, I’m in a place high in the house (my converted attic room) writing at a desk that overlooks the treetops and the top floors of the houses across the way. We are lucky to live in North London – a bit like the ‘suburbs’, I guess. It’s not central London, with too much noise and traffic. Yet it’s not so far out that you feel disconnected from things.

This week I’m writing 1000 words of autobiography – a self contained story from my life, that could also be a chapter in my actual autobiography. Thinking about it, my life possibly does lend itself to an autobiography (I’m not bragging, just thinking in terms of interesting things), since I’ve had things happen to me that might help other people. I’m deaf, and a feminist and have had to fight for things – in education, in my social life. I’ve had to be determined, to push my way through. All whilst being reserved and shy, and only building up my confidence after leaving University. University was hard – I didn’t really have any friends from the first time around.

My Masters degree was better – I met some lovely likeminded people who reminded me that the world really is a wonderful place for finding friends. I’ve had some amazing experiences – on stage, at chickenshed, finding my soulmate and meeting him for the first time, travelling and going on holiday. I’ve learnt not to take things for granted, as much as I possibly can. This has been learnt the hard way – money problems, family problems, struggles.

That’s the thing – everyone has a story to tell. I guess what makes a good read depends largely on the way people tell their stories. Even if I never try to publish my autobiography, I might just write it and publish it via blurb for my children and grandchildren to read.

Write your self. Your body must be heard. Only then will the immense resources of the unconscious spring forth. (Hélène Cixous, 1976: 880)

Haiku

This week in the creative writing course we were asked to do two things: listen to one of our favourite songs and describe how it makes you feel, why you like it so much, and what it is about. I wrote about ‘In The Shadows’ by The Rasmus because I have never really thought about why I like it so much. It is an anthem – something I love to listen to because it makes me feel both sad, angry and optimistic. And not so alone.

I had real trouble thinking about what I was going to write about in a Haiku, and decided this morning to write about my uncle, who died two years ago, suddenly. I’ve never written about my feelings or used them in a poem, because it is something that still affects me and my family. I was really concerned that it might be too morbid in terms of writing about death, but I’ve never been afraid to talk about or write about things that seem gruesome (have a look at The Night Shift…).

We live in a society where sometimes we are afraid to confront the reality of death – people don’t talk about it, feel that if we talk about it, it might result in outbursts and tears – and what is wrong with that? Particularly in the UK, it seems like we are afraid to show our feelings out of context (we can cry at funerals, but not two years later on the anniversary of someone’s death, perhaps). I feel that it’s healthy to talk about and show our feelings – showing them connects us to each other and allows pent up feelings to come out.

The Death of my Uncle

Letting go is hard

Cram my love on one small card

The white lilies glow.

London Calling…

You are a carnival –
A fusion and a melting pot.

Your shape is idiosyncratic;

An interweaving tapestry of the old and the new.

 

Your colours blur together,

And I’m dizzy, inspired.

 

You have an edgy head for business,

But at heart you crave anarchy.

 

Lit up, sparkling, you take my breath away;

Yet I travel within your rumbling belly every day.

 

You are a historical giant,

And you lead a youthful dance.

 

You wrap yourself in the finest culture,

Dripping with diamonds and stamping your heavy duty boots.

 

© Elizabeth Ward 2009

Stepping into the Unknown…

The other day, I just completed my first short story, since, well, when I was doing my GCSE’s. It came out differently than I expected; in fact, it delved into a completely different genre than I expected it to. My character loves to read mystery books, is an ex-police officer (after only three years serving she becomes disillusioned) and is a night warden for the village church. Oddly enough, I thought I would be writing a mystery story – something that tied to the characters’ interests. Instead, it wound up being a horror-fantasy story, set in a graveyard, with a sceptical character. I never cease to surprise myself sometimes…

I’ve set up a page where I’ll showcase some of my writing – the story is up already under the link ‘The Night Shift’ on the Showcase page. Just click on the tab at the top of the blog to find it. I’m hoping that as time goes on, I’ll post more stories, as I get used to writing prose and making things up

I believe the creative writing course is going to veer towards poetry next week. This week involves using stories and ads in newspapers as inspiration. It should be interesting…

A Little Bit of Inspiration

The creative writing course is going well so far: I’ve written three small pieces, but they are mostly descriptive, as opposed to a flight of fantasy. I’ve also been thinking about writing short stories and how I can submit them to competitions or writing magazines. It’s strange when inspiration strikes from what seems like nowhere; whether you use your everyday life or something you’ve observed. Or whether these ideas seem to come from nowhere and take you by surprise. I like to surround myself with things or try to find things that might inspire me even further. I have been reading Steven King’s ‘On Writing’ and have recently finished ‘Wannabe a Writer?’ by Jane Wenham-Jones. I have also bought a book called ‘The Sound of Paper’ by Julia Cameron, which is proving to be quite inspiring, even though I have only flicked through it and dipped in here and there.

I also stumbled across the Moleskine website, as well as We Heart It; images can be really inspiring and make you feel a whole lot more capable of creating something. This is why my room at home is so inspiring to me – I can look around and feel like the possibilities are almost limitless. Being here in Scotland is okay, but I’m finding the lack of my own space a bit trying at times.

I’ve sort of ‘claimed’ a corner of a sofa and stacked my books and notebooks around me. I don’t feel like this is ideal, but it will have to do for now, and I’m grateful that I even have any space at all. The wireless connection is amazing, and I’m now desperate to have one as it would mean freedom around the house!

I think it’s harder when you go looking for inspiration, but you need to keep an open mind. I started writing a short story based upon a man who keeps pigeons in his attic because I happened to notice that someone across the way actually has pigeons in his attic!

I started to think about what his life might be like and applied the ‘what if..’ rule. What if the reason he keeps pigeons is because he feels more comfortable with animals rather than humans? What if he fancied himself as a bit of an eco-warrior? What if he met a woman who was also very conscious of the environment and she taught him how to relate to humans? Thus I had a story that could happen…

I’ve also bought a little moleskine notebook – my first moleskine! I have loads of notebooks though, and they all have a purpose of some kind (even if that purpose only makes sense to me…). I’m going to use this one for noting down flashes of inspiration and ideas, to think about my writing and where it might be going.

I think I’ll avoid thinking about the ‘getting published’ part until I’ve actually created a few pieces and edited, polished and thought about them properly. This is why the creative writing course will be so good – it will give me the structure and framework within which I can think about my writing and why I write how I write. Hopefully it will also give me perspective about where my strengths and weaknesses lie, and what I can do to improve on these.

Dystopian Fantasy

Today I’ve decided to get sorted with the feel and politics of the world I’m doing. As I mentioned in the last post, the world of the novel has a strongly dystopian feel (dystopia is opposite of utopia – kind of like Brave New World and Nineteen Eighty Four, The Handmaid’s Tale, etc). In some ways I feel like the world is a possible inevitable conclusion to where we are going right now in politics, in social values, in the treatment of social issues. Coming from an inclusive background, probably the result of growing up deaf and being a performing ex-member of Chickenshed theatre company, I feel that our world has become numb when it comes to social inclusion, social development.

My ideal world would be one where people saw the potential in each and every one of us, appreciated difference (race, gender, ability, sexuality), and understand that everyone has a skill, a way to contribute to the world; if only people were more open minded. This world now falls so short of this ideal. Maybe it is naive to expect people to be more open minded and accepting but a lot of it probably is about educating people, getting them to think outside the box. I think that is what places like Chickenshed aim to do – they draw on everyone’s talent and abilities, they try to get people to think outside the socially accepted way of thinking at any given time.

I am also drawn towards Feminist dystopian and utopian fiction: pieces such as The Handmaid’s Tale (Margaret Atwood), Woman on the Edge of Time (Marge Piercy), He, She and It (Piercy), The Female Man (Joanna Russ), The Telling (Ursula K. Le Guin) and Herland (Charlotte Perkins Gilman). These books have inspired me to think outside the box when it comes to what feminist fiction looks like. Most of these books are within the science fiction and fantasy genre; a lot of dystopian and utopian books involve dreaming up other worlds and thinking about how these worlds would work, how big ideas can trickle down and affect everyday life. Dystopias often function as warnings or as a kind of idea of the natural progression of things if we continue to carry on in a particular vein. Feminist Science Fiction is often strongly utopian or dystopian in flavour.

This is probably why I get so enthused about SF&F – the idea that anything goes. In some respects, I feel that these genres are natural offshoots of fairy tales, of supernatural creatures, magic and human dreams. It isn’t just about spaceships, elves and epic battles. SF&F, like fairy tales, often have an overarching theme or morality they want to explore. I enjoy reading Urban Fantasy books, but sometimes they don’t fulfil my need to explore a particular issue, theme or political/social problem.

You could argue that they don’t need to explore these sort of things; I agree because fiction can just be pure escapism, without any worry of having to wrap your head around politics or human right issues. Yet when I read Charlaine Harris’ Sookie Stackhouse Vampire Mysteries, I am struck by how social issues and politics are explored, even if it isn’t immediately obvious. A lot of the focus is sometimes on how a supernatural character interacts on a social and political level with other supernatural characters – in werewolf packs, in relation to other werewolf packs, vampire kings and queens and so on.

So even though the world I am crafting in my book is at the beginning stages, I do know that I want to explore social and political issues because they affect all the characters in the books. There are underground groups lobbying for human right issues, for supernatural issues. The government has become a kind of military and totalitarian state, employing heavy surveillance. It may be that I need to immerse myself in ideas of how surveillance works, how it affects our lives already.

I’ve already hinted at how almost every country has entered a state of lockdown where it is very difficult to leave or enter. Immigration laws are heavy handed and discriminatory. Sexism has ceased to be subtle and is now much more overt, whilst the evidence of racism is more obvious – with immigrants in particular. To be more realistic, it will take thinking about the timelines of these occurences – how far into the future is this all taking place? About twenty years from now would be plausible because the main character’s mother was in her twenties in this time (2009) and the main character is in now in her mid to late twenties after doing a PhD. I will need to plot out both the political and social timeline as well as a vague sketching of the character’s timeline to the present in the novel.

I would like the novel to be focused on the character because she is someone that I hope the reader will enjoy getting to know. She has no formal training in using guns or weapons etc, but she is involved with underground movements in a knowledge capacity. Being a journalist, she is inclined towards being curious and inquisitive about people and their lives, about the meaning behind people’s actions. Yet she is not part of the mainstream media and this gives her more freedom to engage in activist work (seeing as the media is in the hands of the government and media conglomerates).

People are surprised by her; being deaf, she is not expected to know as much or do as much as she does. The first chapter is revealing in this respect – it begins to set the scene, the place the action starts to happen, the voice of the character comes out, and we start to get an insight into what things are like when you interact with the world, being a deaf person. We also get a taste of the restrictive and paranoid conditions of living in this particular time; what has led to such a change.

The mother functions as us – she was around during this time, she has been through the changes leading to the present day of the novel. We also get a sense of tragedy in the character’s life – the death of her father, the reluctance to talk about it with us. Most of all, I want to give the reader a sense of emotional attachment to the character, some sense of empathy.

A main character can be both a guide through the world and a good friend, someone we want to get to know more about. Sara is someone who covers up her sadness with a sense of sarcastic wit, with a facade. This is both paranoia of the time and a desire to cover up her secrets and her emotion. As a result, she comes across to others as a slightly standoffish and quiet person. Only time will tell how she develops and what she reveals to me and perhaps to others if/when the novel gets finished and maybe published.

The other characters that I’ve written so far are Sara’s mother, grandmother and two sisters, as well as three men that offer a hint of the supernatural and of exciting things to come. I think in the next few chapters, something will happen (I don’t know what) to do with the student she meets outside the library and her encounter with the shapeshifter. Perhaps the early days of writing a novel is the most exciting, but I’m really looking forward to seeing where everything goes. I want to try and avoid cliches and pitfalls that arise when writing fantasy; therefore I will try not to channel any other authors or fiction that I’ve read (even though this is unavoidable, since we are all cultural animals).

I’m hoping, in the next few weeks, that as well as doing my writing course, I will be able to focus somewhat on writing different parts of the novel, and starting to build up on the knowledge I have of the world already. Character profiles are also something I want to think about, so watch this space!

N.B. Picture by Augustin Sirai (found on FFFound).